Prescribing naloxone concomitantly with pharmaceutical opioids could help impress on patients the risks of the drugs and reduce overdose deaths, researchers say.

Melbourne GP Dr Pallavi Prathivadi and Associate Professor Suzanne Nielsen have called on GPs to “change the narrative” around naloxone and present it as a routinely prescribed emergency medication like autoinjectable adrenaline.

In the US, the CDC recommends co-prescription of naloxone for a broad range of patients with chronic pain at risk of overdose, including those concomitantly taking benzodiazepines or on more than 50mg morphine equivalent a day.

More than 75% of Australians prescribed S8 opioids would receive naloxone if this advice was followed here, say Dr Prathivadi and Professor Nielsen, from Monash University.